Thirty years of ‘normal’ politicians have led Western nations to decline

There can be no doubt about it: Donald Trump is not a normal candidate – which is precisely why you should vote for him. The strength of a democratic system is not just its supposed moral superiority – which is a topic for a different column – but its ability to allow for renewal and revitalization within the system. Contrary to one-party states or military dictatorships one does not have to overthrow the entire government to create change, but one can simply vote in a new one. It is this element of democracy that must be protected at all cost, because if a growing number of people feel that they can no longer vote out those who are currently in charge, at some point their anger will be pointed not just at the government, but the very system itself.

Political parties and bureaucratic agencies tend to entrench their power and shield themselves from the will of the voters, and that is neither new nor surprising but a natural element of human nature. Once you find yourself in a cushy position, you do not want to give it up, and ideally ensure that you can hold that position as long as possible. This gradually leads to the emergence of vested interests who benefit from a maintenance of the status quo and are resisting change, which in turn leads to “institutional sclerosis” as laid out by Mancur Olson in his 1982 book The Rise and Decline of Nations. Think about it like barnacles attaching themselves to the hull of a ship: as they accumulate, they drag the ship and force it to burn more fuel, even though it does not pick up speed or becomes easier to manoeuvre. 

This is precisely the situation the “ship” of the West finds itself in. We burn ever more money but are less nimble and less productive, because most of it – like the barnacles on the ship – is wasted on inefficient and often useless processes and institutions. If you look at this graph from the economist James Clark, you can see that the productivity of the public sector has flatlined in the UK for the last 27 years, despite the British tax burden being at the highest level since World War Two. If you want to break this trend which has become “normal” you need an “abnormal” disrupter who can crack the barnacles dragging the ship. In some cases, these disruptors can be of a more moderate nature, like the Danish Social Democrats or the Sweden Democrats. Their ships have not been affected so badly that a Trump-like figure has become necessary, but the situation is different in countries like the US, the UK, and Germany. The supposed normalcy of people like Merkel, Scholz, Sunak, Macron or Biden has put these countries on a course of decline, and while they are at different stages of the journey, the direction is the same. 

It is easy to mock Trump for his antics and idiosyncrasies, and while he might appear as a unserious candidate, in many areas he exhibits the seriousness that is needed: For example, the idea to nominate Elon Musk as the head of a Department of Government Efficiency is quite brilliant, because it gets to the heart of the matter. The United States are on an unsustainable path, with the national debt rising by USD 1 trillion approximately every 100 days. It would be bold too claim that a new department under Musk would eliminate that problem, but to paraphrase Bismarck, “recognizing a problem is a crucial part of the solution.” We are constantly being told that Trump’s former advisors are warning us of a second Trump term, but that is because these former advisors are part of the barnacle-class. People like Mark Milley or John Bolton bear responsibility for a disastrous foreign policy, including the wars in Iraq and the shameful retreat from Afghanistan, while Trump was actively altering the political landscape in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords. Everything Trump did and that supposedly would lead to a catastrophe, like moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, turned out to be a step into the right direction. For all his flaws – and there are many – Trump does not believe in managing American decline, but in reversing it, despite the resistance he encounters from the “normalcy” crowd. 

If decline has become the new normal, what is the point in voting in candidates that are promising nothing but its continuation? From failed migration policies to suicidal energy policies and shipping of one’s industrial capacity to China, the “normal” of the last thirty years has been nothing but harmful for many citizens of Western countries. Unfortunately, old habits die hard, which is why too many voters still believe that allowing the ruling “barnacles” one more term will somehow get the ship on a fast track to a better course. It is not going to happen, and what is needed is an avalanche of the non-normal which then can make a policy of ascent the new norm. If Trump would be the first snowball in this event, I hope he wins.